Council to consider new ward lines tonight

Tonight at 6, the City Council will meet at City Hall to discuss redistricting within the city.

While this may sound alarming at first, as people may panic that their wards could change, the council plans to keep neighborhoods intact.

Further, redistricting takes place once every 10 years and aims to even out the number of people living in each of the nine wards in Warwick, providing the wards with approximately the same number of voters.

“Basically, they look at all the numbers, where everyone’s living and equalize the number of people per ward,” Mayor Scott Avedisian said yesterday in a brief phone call.

The change in wards is resulting from the 2010 Census.

Wards may lose or gain population because people move. In this case, certain wards are losing population, as homes have been bought by T.F. Green Airport and demolished because they were in high noise contours.

“I’m told that Ward 3 needs to gain more people and Wards 8 and 9 need to be smaller,” Avedisian said.

The process will not impact existing council members, as their residences will not become a part of another ward.